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As of February 2008, India iad an incarceration rate of 35 per 100,000, which is one of the lowest in the world. Indian prisons housed 358,368 individuals, including pretrail and remand inmates, who constitute 69.7 percent of the prison population. Nearly 4 percent of inmates are female, less than one-fifth of 1 percent are juveniles under the age of 18 and 1.1 percent are foreigners (International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College London, 2008).
India is divided into 28 states and seven union territories.1 The constitution assigns the custody and correction of offenders to the individual states and territories. Day-to-day administration of inmates rests on principles incorporated in the Prisons Act of 1894, the Prisoners Act of 1900 and the Transfer of Prisoners Act of 1950 (Heitzman and Worden, 1995).
Prison conditions vary from state to state. The more prosperous states have better facilities and attempt to provide rehabilitation programs; the poorer ones can afford only the most bare and primitive accommodations. Female inmates are mostly incarcerated in segregated areas of men's prisons. Conditions for holding inmates also vary according to classification. India retains a system set up during the colonial period that mandates different treatment for different categories of inmates. Under this system, foreigners, individuals held for political reasons, and inmates of high caste and class are segregated from lower-class inmates and given better treatment. This treatment includes larger or less-crowded cells, access to books and newspapers, and more and better food. Despite laws that mandate egalitarian treatment of Dalits,2 a rigid class system that circumvents the spirit of these laws exists within the prison system (Heitzman and Worden, 1995).
India's Demographics
Slightly more than one-third the size of the U.S., India has more than 3.5 times the inhabitants (1.1 billion). India is also a fairly young nation, with half its citizens under the age of 25 (in the U.S., the median age is about 35). India's literacy rate, based on the number of people age 15 and older who can read and write, is 73 percent for males and 48 percent for females. Twenty-five percent of the population lives below the poverty line in this democratically governed federal republic. Eighty percent of the Indian population is Hindu; 13 percent is Muslim; 2...